Google Calendar’s ‘known senders’ filter should help stamp out spam invites

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The new "known senders" option on the calendar is supposed to make it easier to manage your schedule. You have toggling on the setting to prevent invites from people you don't know. Only people in your contacts list, anyone you've interacted with through workspace, and users in your company or organization will be added to the calendar.

If you are familiar with the service, you will know that it adds events to your schedule based on emails. Having a calendar filled with fake and annoying events could be a consequence of letting the floodgates open. You have to respond to each invite if youDisabling automatic event adding altogether means you have to reply to each invite

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This solution was added by the company after they promised a fix in 2019. The new filter can be turned on by going to your calendar settings and selecting events. Choose Only if the sender is known if you want to add them to my calendar.

This setting doesn't stop you from getting invites. If you don't accept them, they won't appear in your calendar. If that matters to you, you can find a note on a support page that says choosing this setting may reveal to a sender that you don't have them in your contacts list.

As of late, there has been a number of small changes made to its workspace apps. The calendar invites were made easier to read last month. The loophole that allowed people to store abusive shared folders on other users' drives was addressed last year.